Cover of Peter Lances new book from Harper Collins/ReganBooks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Statement by Peter Lance. 8.27.06 Sunday

National Geographic Channel’s rush to air a documentary Monday August 28th, based on TRIPLE CROSS, my upcoming investigative book on Ali Mohamed, al Qaeda’s chief spy whom the FBI failed to stop on the road to 9/11 distorts my essential research and the central conclusion of the book. Worse, the network refuses to even give me a screening copy of the documentary to fact-check while falsely accusing me of making statements in the book they could not verify.

BACKGROUND:

In early 2006, The National Geographic Channel (via Towers Productions Inc. (TPI) of Chicago, entered into an Agreement with me to produce a two hour documentary based entirely on the research for my upcoming investigative book from the ReganBooks division of Harper Collins Publishers (HCP)

TRIPLE CROSS: How bin Laden’s Chief Security Advisor infiltrated the CIA, the FBI and the Green Berets. The Agreement or contract called for me to be the narrator and principal editorial voice of the documentary which would be based exclusively on my enterprise reporting. (see copy attached). It even provided for a payment of $10,000.00 for additional research by three journalists who were helping me gather facts for the book: Paul Thompson, John Berger and A.J. Weberman.

Because of the rigorous schedule of producing both the book and the documentary, which I also was scheduled to co-write as well as co-executive produce, the agreement called for Towers Productions (TPI) and NGC to turn over all on-camera interview transcripts to me so that they could be integrated into the book as well as the final script.

On or about June 1st, after I had conducted an audio taped interview with retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan, whose Squad I-49 failed to stop Ali Mohamed on the road to 9/11, Cloonan agreed to an on-camera interview with TPI/NGC but he insisted that I be prevented from seeing the transcript. Later, other former Feds like U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White of the SDNY and Det. Tommy Corrigan of the Joint Terrorist Task Force in New York make identical demands.

I objected to being walled off by TPI/NGC from this key evidence but they acquiesced to the demands of these ex-Feds.

For weeks, despite my repeated demands to Jonathan Towers, principal of TPI and John Ford, President of Programming to NGC (see June 16th 2006 letters below) NGC refused to make the transcripts available to me.

Further, after I did a script draft presented to Towers on May 5th, that properly reflected my research to that date, Jonathan Towers submitted a draft on June 12th (slightly revised on June 16th) that skewed the documentary so that it was being told from the point of view of Cloonan and White.

As I stated in my letter to Mr. Ford, they were now doing “Schindler’s List from Hitler’s perspective.” They took a documentary based entirely on my work - which was highly critical of the negligence of agents like Cloonan and former AUSA Patrick Fitzgerald - currently the U.S. Attorney for Chicago and Special Prosecutor in the CIA leak case - and made it appear that they were somehow on top of the Ali Mohamed scandal.

Because TPI/NGC caused me weeks of delay, and I had to finish the book, I suggested that they cease and desist on production and reconvene with me in September, post-publication to get the facts right – provided they sent me the three transcripts, so that I could integrate them into the book draft.

Finally on July 12th, 2006 – six weeks after Cloonan’s interview, Towers sent me the three transcripts in an 11th hour effort to cure TPI’s breach of contract. But TPI and NGC refused to move off their scheduled airdate of August 28th – and worse, they now decided to re-title the documentary and describe it as “based in part” on the work of Peter Lance.

I was forced to hire an attorney, Bernard V. Kleinman, an expert on terrorism issues who practices in the SDNY. Beginning on July 25th we began demanding a copy of the rough cut for screening. This, after Towers accused me of failing to participate in the “fact checking.”

NGC’s response was to defer to John Hooper, a lawyer that does litigation work for News Corp the principal owner of NGC, which also, coincidentally owns HCP.

Mr. Hooper informed Mr. Kleinman that I could not get even a screening copy of the documentary to check for inaccuracies unless I signed a non-disparagement agreement – a demand that was impossible for me to honor, since I could not sign off on a documentary, the last script draft of which was so flawed, without seeing it.

On August 17th NGC issued the statement (below) which made the libelous allegation that I withdrew from the project after “insisting our program include details, accusations and conclusions that we could not independently confirm.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout this eight month production and post production process I have begged NGC to allow me access to all interviews for the very purpose of confirming their accuracy.

In fact, Cong. Curt Weldon (R-PA) vice chairman of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees withdrew his permission for use of his on camera interview for the doc because he was so upset that NGC and TPI had excluded me, the principal editorial voice of the project, on whose research the documentary was based.

This is a case of a cable network acquiescing to the demands of sources – in this case, Feds who will be embarrassed by the findings in my book TRIPLE CROSS -- and literally separating the principal editorial voice of the project from the production and post production process in order to make an airdate.

In breaching their agreement with me, I lost weeks of work time on the book. The publication date of September 5th has been delayed as I now integrate the details of the interviews with Cloonan, White and Corrigan into the manuscript in order to make sure that it is factually bulletproof. Meanwhile, NGC will be airing a documentary which has effectively hijacked my research and watered down key findings in order to appease some prominent former Feds and to make a previously scheduled airdate.

NGC’s statement below is not only factually inaccurate with their assertion that they “bought the rights” to TRIPLE CROSS the book, but is libel per se with respect to their false allegation that I “withdrew after insisting our program include details, accusations and conclusions that we could not independently confirm.”

I reiterate my multiple requests to NGC (see letters below) communicated directly or through my attorney for them to cease and desist the airing of the program until after publication of the book in late September when all parties can insure that the program is factually accurate and properly reflects my findings. Further I reiterate my multiple requests to NGC to see a rough cut of the documentary so that I can examine it for accuracy. NGC mailed copies to reviewers but they have kept the principal author of the underlying book in the dark on the documentary.

Peter Lance http://www.peterlance.com 212-203-6123 or 310-804-6800

See below:

1) NGC’s statement of August 17th, 1996.
2) Peter Lance’s two letters to John Ford of NGC, June 19th, 2006.
3) Bernard V. Kleinman’s letter to John Hooper, August 16th, 2006.
4) Peter Lances letter to John Fahey Pres. of Nat Geo Society, August 14th, 2006.
5) Peter Lance’s treatment for Nat Geo doc based on TRIPLE CROSS Jan. 2006.

NGC Triple Cross Statement FINAL

National Geographic Channel set out to tell the compelling and fascinating story of how Ali Mohamed triple crossed the U.S. Army, CIA and FBI, and served as Bin Laden’s master spy here in the U.S. We bought the rights to Peter Lance’s upcoming book Triple Cross, as well as all related research, and worked closely with him on our documentary of the same name. Our documentary condenses Mohamed’s nearly 15 year career of terrorism and betrayals into a two hour show based in part on Lance’s work as well as our own independent research. While we appreciate the passion that Lance brought to this project, he withdrew after insisting our program include details, accusations and conclusions that we could not independently confirm or that made this already complicated story more confusing. National Geographic Channel is responsible for the content of this program and, as with all of our shows, we only present facts we can independently verify. While his book is not yet published, we believe it will include details we could not cover within the limits of our two hours, as well as Lance’s personal conclusions, which will be available to those who want to read his book when it is released. We stand behind the facts covered in our show which will allow viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Cinema 21 Group • 140 Butterfly Lane • Montecito, CA • 93108 • • 805-565-5754 • 565-5795 (f) • 212-203-6123 • www.peterlance.com

John Ford
Executive President
Programming
National Geographic Channel
1145 17th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036 Via Fax and E-Mail
June 19th, 2006

John,

I left you and Michael messages on your voice mail at work last night after reading and re-reading Jonathan Towers rewrite of the script for the documentary which purports to represent the findings in my book TRIPLE CROSS. I’m proposing that the three of us get on the phone sometime early today (Monday) so that you can understand the depth of my concern. I’m profoundly disappointed on several levels:

1) First this draft leaves out key elements in the story – three of which I’ve uncovered in the last month that, promise to make news when my book comes out;

2) Second, in the name of “fairness” and “balance” as reputedly dictated by your S&P department, the script skews the documentary so much if favor of the Feds that it actually distorts the factual story.
For example Jack Cloonan appears so often that he seems to be the editorial voice of the project and leaves out key story points about his own negligence in the bin Laden squad – which kept him and Patrick Fitzgerald (his boss in the unit) from preventing the African Embassy bombing – a case I make strongly in the book.

3) The script as drafted identifies so little with my book in the first hour that it will have minimal promotional value, which was the sole reason I consented to this documentary in the first place. Further,

4) Jonathan’s heavy use of theatrical recreations, with actors; a tech-nique that he promised me he wouldn’t use, cheapens my research and does a disservice to a story that is rich in detail and easily capable of being told in a riveting way by use of interviews, file footage, documents and graphics.

I make this assessment not as a “book writer,” disappointed that his written work was not translated well to the screen, but as a five-time Emmy winning documentary film producer and network correspondent with 100’s of news stories and hours of documentaries to my credit.

Having said all of that, I still believe the project can be saved, but I’ve lost faith in Jonathan Towers, so if you want my support and participation in the completion of production, I will need you to agree to some key points before I consent to shooting any of the proposed interviews this week.

The alternative is a legal fight that I’m perfectly prepared to wage in order to preserve my good name and the integrity of my work – but more importantly to insure that in the name of TRIPLE CROSS you don’t air a two-hour documentary that is a grave distortion of the truth.

HOW WE GOT TO THIS POINT

Before I give you my proposal for moving forward I want to review the record with you because the facts of how this project has developed will help you understand, the need to get it “right” with the narrative. You will also understand, I hope, why I’ve lost faith in Towers Productions to deliver on their promise of fairly representing my book and research – something you didn’t seem to comprehend during Tuesday’s conference call when you admonished me for criticizing Jonathan Towers.

If you examine the attached 15 page treatment dated January 27th, 2006, NGC (via Towers Productions Inc. [TPI]} entered into negotiations with my company Cinema 21 Group in December, 2005 to obtain the rights to adapt my new book TRIPLE CROSS and other research generated by me in my two earlier books 1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE and COVER UP into a two-hour documentary entitled TRIPLE CROSS to be telecast on NGC.

On the basis of the aforementioned treatment NGC green lit the project to production. Relying on NGC’s promise to produce a faithful representation of my book, I devoted weeks and weeks of work time to making sure that I fulfilled my end of the contract for production (The Agreement) entered into between C21G and TPI – an amended version of a development Agree-ment we signed in the fall of 2005 prior to bringing the project to you.

Development progressed in earnest with Jonathan, Rachel Milton and Lance Hori, the two online producers spending several days with me here at my Santa Barbara office from February 9th-11th.

At a dinner on February 10th we all agreed to use the Treatment as the precise basis for the first draft script to be delivered on April 6th, 2006 according to your initial TIMELINE.

But when I received that first script draft I was ready to pull the plug on the project after I saw that it was riddled with factual errors and contained, by Lance’s admission, 70% recreations – a technique in documentary film making that I believe should be used minimally.

In early April after receiving that first draft, I agreed to continue with the project only after Jonathan assured me that he would faithfully represent my new book and my research in all future takes on the script.

When he failed to do that in a draft submitted on or about April 28th, 2006 I took a week to deliver a draft on May 7th, 2006 that both reflected the notes from Michael and your S&P department (following our May 1st meeting) and gave a more accurate rendering of my findings. I sent the 93 page script to Jonathan, but apparently he never sent it to NGC.

At that point in early May, Jonathan again promised me that he would make “slight revisions” in the script and that the next draft due June 2nd-3rd would include any new significant findings. He also pledged, during a call with Michael Cascio not to shoot traditional recreations with actors, but to use the technique from Inside 9/11 which kept any re-enactments abstract and minimal.

During the month of May, 2006, as we moved forward and a grid of production MILESTONES was sent to me, I participated fully in continuing the research and feeding my discoveries to TPI as well as helping to secure interviews and writing interview questions in fulfillment of my contract.

A new key interview that I secured was with retired Special Agent Jack Cloonan who had vetted Ali Mohamed post 9/11 but had failed to detect Ali as an al Qaeda spy or prevent the African Embassy bombing plot, even though he and key members of the FBI/SDNY bin Laden unit has ample evidence to suggest that the twin embassy bombing plot was afoot.

Jonathan had almost a month to deliver an updated version of my 5/7/06 script which by the MILESTONES was due June 2nd-3rd.

THREE NEW KEY FINDINGS MISSING FROM THE SCRIPT

I expected that this new draft would include three significant new findings that I had uncovered in the month of May, 2006:

i) The discovery that Mohamed’s control agent John Zent, was personally embroiled in a six year triple murder investigation being conducted by the Fresno County Sheriffs during a period when he was supposed to be the “control” agent for Ali and that his lapses in judgment may have contributed to Mohamed’s ability to get past the FBI.

In the fascinating case, Dana Ewell, the 21 year old heir to an eight million dollar fortune -- with malice aforethought -- hired a hitman to shoot his parents and 24 year old sister in cold blood. Special Agent Zent was the key alibi witness. His daughter Monica was Ewell’s financé and received almost $40,000 after the murders from Ewell whom the FSO proved with an iron-tight case of forensic and eyewitness testimony engineered the murders labeled Fresno’s “crime of the decade.”

The evidence showed that not only Zent interfered and possibly obstruct the investigation, but six years after the crimes he testified as a character witness for Dana, prompting the lead detective to tell me that Zent was “absolutely the worst possible FBI agent to be monitoring a terrorist like Ali Mohamed.”

I particularly expected to see this key finding in the documentary because Jonathan Towers had produced an hour doc on the murders called “A Million Reasons to Kill” and had great footage.

Furthermore, the Zent/Ewell story – which could be told in under three minutes, helps the viewer comprehend how Ali Mohamed could have snookered the FBI for so long – a key point.

ii) I also discovered a key May 8th, 1995 letter from Ellen Corcella, a prosecutor in the EDNY disclosing eight separate instances where SSA R. Lindley DeVecchio had given FBI intelligence to mob killer Gregory Scarpa Sr. and that this unholy alliance between the G-man and the hit man may have explained why the Feds of the NYO and SDNY buried a treasure trove of al Qaeda related evidence in 1996 at a crucial time when they were purportedly trying to connect the dots on Ali Mohamed.

This letter was prima facie evidence from the Feds own files that totally undermined James Kallstrom, former ADIC of the FBI’s NYO who claimed in a 4/10/96 memo to Louis Freeh that there was “insufficient evidence” to form a prosecutive opinion on DeVecchio and pushed for the DeVecchio OPR to be shut down.

This new evidence dovetailed with my belief that the FBI and DOJ entered into an ends/means decision to bury the DeVecchio scandal and thus ignore a treasure trove of evidence from Ramzi Yousef to Greg Scarpa Jr. – evidence which revealed the existence of an active al Qaeda cell in NYC in 1996 led to the location of Yousef’s uncle, KSM, the 9/11 “mastermind.”

iii) Three weeks ago I uncovered a link chart dated 3.21.00 sent to me by Jacob L. Boesen, the principal builder of link charts for Operation Able Danger. With a picture of Ali Mohamed smack dab in the middle of a box outlining bin Laden’s inner circle which included Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, Mohammed Khalifa and Wadih-El-Hage, the chart was proof of why the U.S. Army went along with an order a week later in April 2000 to destroy 2.5 terabytes of data uncovered by Able Danger analysts.

The data vindicated my research in 1000 YEARS and COVER UP and showed a DIRECT LINK between al Qaeda’s inner circle (which included Ali M) and the New York cell of blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman as well as the Yousef –KSM Manila cell.

This new “smoking gun” link chart was proof of why this administration (Bush 41) has gone out of its way to bury a scandal on Bill Clinton’s watch: Why? Because it showed that the Army was aware of Ali Mohamed’s proximity to bin Laden in the Spring of 2000 – and raised the prospect that in tracing back his history they realized that he had infiltrated Fort Bragg as late as November 1989 when Bush 41 was in the White House.

All three of these stunning findings which I uncovered during the month of May related DIRECTLY to the Ali Mohamed story that was the basis of my new book. All three of them should have been in the latest draft of the script.

THE PROJECT THAT YOU BOUGHT

As the treatment you bought reflects, TRIPLE CROSS has always been about two issues a) what Ali Mohamed did to deceive three U.S. intelligence agencies and b) how he was able to deceive them, particularly the FBI.

To tell the Ali Mohamed story while not telling the full and accurate story of the stunning series of missteps by the NYO and SDNY, the two bin Laden “offices of origin,” would be to do a disservice not only to your viewers, but to the American people and it would further breach your commitment to me to accurately reflect my book TRIPLE CROSS in your documentary.

TPI’S DISTORTION OF THE ALI MOHAMED STORY

In the past three weeks, as discussed in Tuesday’s conference call, it became clear to me that Jonathan Towers was, in some way, attempting to distort the reporting in my book in his production of the documentary.

First, he agreed to two self-serving interviews with prominent Feds, Jack Cloonan and Mary Jo White and acquiesced to their demands that I not receive copies of the transcripts of those interviews.

This was a direct breach of the following provision in my contract with TPI which granted TPI limited rights in the use of my book and research:

13 C. "that Peter Lance may use in his book TRIPLE CROSS any and all research material previously generated by him and/or to be generated by him and/or Towers in the course of production without prior permission."

Jonathan further breached the contract on May 31st, 2006 by refusing to pay me the second installment in the contract and then attempted to extort a non-disclosure agreement out of me in return for the payment of my contract in full.

He refused to return any of my phone calls for weeks and had not communicated with me by e-mail from 6/2 to 6/12 when he sent his latest draft of the script 9-10 days after it was due by TPI’s own Milestone grid.

I experienced further lost work time in the last three weeks having to get assurances from NGC on what should have been a non-issue: the tie-in between the documentary’s art work and my book cover. Any production executive understands the nature of a book tie-in yet I was forced to go to elaborate lengths in e-mails to explain that concept to Jonathan Towers.

This suggested to me that Jonathan was attempting to spin the documentary away from a direct rendering of my findings in TRIPLE CROSS and create a new “adversary” documentary in which – in the name of ‘fairness’ and ‘balance” -- my findings were attacked by the very Feds whom I was criticizing – Worse the script as redrafted was going to leave the impression, via interviewees like retired SA Jack Cloonan, that the Feds were on top of the Ali Mohamed deception.

The conference call Tuesday was prompted by Jonathan’s attempt to force me to conduct the “war room” interviews on Wednesday 6/14/06, five days before the deadline for NGC executives to offer notes on the script.

His e-mail of 6/12 implied that I was the stumbling block to the completion of this project, so I urgently requested the conference call.

TUESDAY’S CONFERENCE CALL

In the course of that call, I was assured by you and Michael Cascio and Char Serwa that NGC had ever intention of fulfilling its pledge to me to accurately reflect my book TRIPLE CROSS, the findings of which were laid out precisely in the scene by scene treatment that you green lit in January.

After you left the conference call, all parties pledged to move forward in good faith to produce a documentary that, while offering the Feds a chance to respond, also accurately reflected my findings on their negligence.

At the end of the call Jonathan informed me that he couldn’t “afford” to include the Ewell/Zent story – after I asked him if it was in the script. He said that the script was 10 minutes over and that, as it was, major cuts would have to be made. I told him that I would read the script in good faith and make proposal for cuts in material that I felt was unnecessary, like the Hezbollah-Sunni summit in order to make room for the key new material.

Then, no less than two hours later Rachel Milton called to inform me that she was going to do a new interview the next day with former NYPD Det. Tommy Corrigan,” a member of the JTTF, whom I barely mentioned in 1000 YEARS, never mentioned in COVER UP and had no role (to my knowledge) in the Ali Mohamed story. Corrigan had “agreed to an interview” she said, but he too was insisting that I not get to see the transcript.

That’s when I realized what was going on.

I had done a documentary that represented an important new minority take on the 9/11 story. While you had bought the 9/11 Commission’s whitewashed version of events in Inside 9/11, this documentary was going to give you a chance to set the record straight on FBI/DOJ negligence through the riveting never-before-told story of Ali Mohamed.

MISUSE OF THE FAIRNESS-BALANCE CONCEPT

But what has evolved, in the name of fairness is a documentary that not only distorts the truth about the negligence by the Feds – by offering them unchallenging time to utter self-serving testimonials – but it applies a “he said/she said” standard typically reserved for the nightly news.

In my message to you I cited the example of Ed Murrow’s classic CBS Report “Harvest of Shame” in which he exposed the plight of migrant workers. The standards and practices people at CBS at that time didn’t feel compelled to force Murrow to get a lot of sound bites from the offending farmers of Belle Glade, Florida where the doc was shot.

In that hour of film Murrow and Fred W. Friendly (my advisor at Columbia J Schools) presented the tough unvarnished facts.

That’s what TRIPLE CROSS the book is and that’s the documentary that you bought when you green lit the treatment.

Now for whatever reasons: corporate cold feet, pressure from the FBI or DOJ – or maybe even a little of both – Jonathan has felt compelled to load the doc with as many of the Feds as he can to “balance” my criticism of them.

Keep in mind that both the FBI and the DOJ – particular the office of the U.S. Attorney for the SDNY have held the media high ground for years.

They have full time P.R. staffs to spin their version of events. The SDNY cranks out an average of 20 press releases a month.

When it came time for the FBI and SDNY to be judged by the 9/11 Commission they got a pass because alumni like Dietrich Snell and Jamie Gorelick – who should have been WITNESSES before the Commission, ended up as the chief inquisitors.

Thus no accountability was assessed for the stunning series of intelligence failures from the Calverton surveillance in 1989 through 9/11.

I was telling the heretofore untold “true” story of what happened – giving your viewers important information that relates directly to the FBI’s failure to reform post 9/11.

In my interview with him Jack Cloonan admitted to me that the FBI had no business fighting counter terrorism – it simply wasn’t suited for it.

But that “truth” would never show up in Jonathan’s version of events, because once he sat for the cameras Cloonan offered a kinder, gentler spin that portrayed the Bureau in a different light.

Worse, he comes across as someone who was actually ON TO Ali Mohamed.

THE FALSE IMPRESSION OF USING CLOONAN UP FRONT

Whereas in my 5/7/06 draft, I am the principal editorial voice of the documentary on TRIPLE CROSS (my book) I have now been replaced by Jack Cloonan, the former FBI agent who didn’t get Ali Mohamed to confess until after 9/11 and who failed to stop the African Embassy bombing in August 1998 even though he and Patrick Fitzgerald who ran the SDNY’s “bin Laden” squad, had met Ali face to face in 1997.

Cloonan, Fitzgerald and Special Agent Dan Coleman, another key member of the squad, had access to wiretaps from 1996 on the key members of the Kenya cell, whom Ali lived with and interacted with for years.

Yet these Feds from the two bin Laden “offices of origin,” were unable to discover that in 1993 Ali Mohamed had personally done the surveillance for the bombings that bin Laden had used in 1994 to target the suicide truck bomb that killed 234 and injured 1000’s on 8/7/98.

They failed to do this despite the fact that from 1992 on Ali Mohamed had been working as an FBI informant with SA John Zent of the San Francisco and San Jose offices of the FBI as his “control” agent.

Further, Fitzgerald, Cloonan and Coleman failed to detect the Embassy bombing plot despite the fact that Coleman had searched the house of Wadih El-Hage, a key cell leader in August 1997 – a year before the bombings -- and found Ali Mohamed’s phone numbers in the files.

Yet once again they failed to pull Ali over until after the twin East African Embassy bombings. The failure of Fitzgerald, Coleman and Cloonan to prevent those bombings is a KEY FINDING in the book TRIPLE CROSS but you would never know it from reading Jonathan’s 6/12/06 script draft.

THAT IS THE TRUTH. NOW ASK YOURSELF IF THAT STORY COMES ACROSS IN JONATHAN REVISED DRAFT OF 6.16.06?

Instead of reflecting the NEGLIGENCE of the Feds in the script as painstakingly documented in my research, the NGC-TPI version of TRIPLE CROSS -- as re-invented by Jonathan Towers from the Feds perspective -- represents A DISTORTED VIEW.

While he threw many of my sound bites from the 5/7/06 draft into the back end of the script, it’s clear that despite his month for the rewrite, that this was a hastily cobbled together draft. He has me saying essentially the same thing twice about the contents found in Nosair’s house, for example.

But given Jonathan’s penchant for slanting this doc in favor of the Feds, it’s clear to me that in each succeeding draft, he would attempt to load up more apologists (like Corrigan) for the Feds’ failures and keep me from examining the full text of their interviews as contractually guaranteed.

THIS DRAFT FAILS AS A MECHANISM FOR SHOWCASING MY BOOK

As a company 2/3’s owned by News Corp. which owns my publisher Harper Collins Publisher (HCP) and being in a position to do a documentary that would accurately represent an HCP book, NGC is validating TPI’s distortion of the story, which replaces me, the principal editorial voice, with Cloonan, whose interview Jonathan was so desperate to prevent me from seeing.

In my 5/7/06 draft I had ten (10) separate sound bites of on camera discourse or narration in the first ten pages, Jonathan’s draft gives me one line on page one and a brief sound bite on page ten. In Jon’s 11th hour draft turned in on 6/12, Jack Cloonan now has ten (10) separate sound bites and he’s the object of a recreation scene with Patrick Fitzgerald on page two.

This draft is like telling Schindler’s List from Hitler’s perspective.

A CHEESY “REALITY SHOW” VERSION OF MY BOOK

To add insult to injury the script is a throwback to the 4/6/06 draft with dozens of recreations in which actors are used to tell a journalistic story, a technique that could hold the project up to ridicule as Jon substitutes the tight mosaic of facts and file footage in my 5/7/06 draft with a draft that actually makes mention of working around “our lead actor’s schedule.”

So much for Jon’s demand Tuesday that the crew had to rush out to shoot my “war room” interviews. He was reluctant to accommodate me, but he seems worried that he might not fit a paid actor into his production schedule.

The very first paragraph of our amended Agreement states that:

Please refer to that certain memorandum of agreement (hereinafter, the “MOA,” a copy of which is attached hereto and made a part hereof as Appendix “A”) dated December 1, 2005 by and between Towers Productions, Inc. and Cinema 21 Group pursuant to which the parties thereto formalized their understandings with respect to the exclusive development of a film, television and/or video project based upon the original research of Peter Lance dealing with the untold story of Ali A. Mohamed, his key role in Al Qaeda terror plots and triple crossing of US officials on the road to 9/11, and culminating in a soon-to-be published book presently entitled Triple Cross: [subtitled to be determined] (“Triple Cross”).

It does not furnish TPI, or NGC with a license to produce an independent documentary in which you line up a series of Feds, under the guise of fairness, to undermine my central findings.

Further, the weeks and weeks of lost work time due to Jonathan’s fraud in the inducement, which NGC has endorsed, has cost me untold damages.

A PROPOSAL FOR GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Because I’ve lost faith at this point in any assurances you have made to me, I want the following agreement in writing prior to shooting my interviews:

i) The opening 10 minutes will reflect my 5/7/06 draft. Cloonan’s use will be kept at a minimum;

ii) whatever interviews are shot of me in the “war room” and in NYC will make it to the final cut.

iii) Each interview cut with me will be lower thirded either “Peter Lance author of TRIPLE CROSS” or bear my website www.peterlance.com

iv) you will guarantee that all title graphics – the open the close and the in and out of each commercial break - will reflect a direct tie in to the art work of the book cover for TRIPLE CROSS as designed by Harper Collins.

v) no more interviews will be conducted at this point beyond mine, Paul Thompson’s Det. John Souza and possibly 9/11 widow Monica Gabrielle.

vi) We will restore the three key elements mentioned earlier: The DeVecchio story, The Zent/Ewell story and the 3.21.00 link chart. I will work with you in good faith to make cuts in the script to justify those adds;

vii) There will be a 15 second notice at the end of the doc PRIOR TO THE CREDITS which says: TRIPLE CROSS is available for order on www.amazon.com (until Sept. 4th) and after that it will say: TRIPLE CROSS is available on www.amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

viii) The opening credits will say “Based on TRIPLE CROSS by Peter Lance.”

If you agree to those provisions in writing – and frankly why shouldn’t you? Then I will proceed in good faith with my interviews this week in California and on the 27th in New York. If you choose to fight me at this point when I will seek a TRO based on your breach of contract in preventing me access to the documentary transcripts. All I’m asking you to do is live up to the letter and spirit of your original commitment to my book and not make a documentary which reflect it.

Let me know what you want to do

Respectfully,

Peter Lance

Cinema 21 Group • 140 Butterfly Lane • Montecito, CA • 93108 • • 805-565-5754 • 565-5795 (f) • 212-203-6123 • www.peterlance.com

John Ford
Executive President
Programming
National Geographic Channel
1145 17th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036

E-Mail
June 19th, 2006

John,

I just got off the phone after an hour conference call with Michael Cascio and Jonathan Towers of Towers Productions Inc. (TPI) in which both gentlemen felt the need to have their lawyers on the line.

Michael Beller was on hand to represent The National Geographic Channel (NGC) and Barry Messinger was on the line from New York where he represents TPI.

The call resulted from the letter that I sent you this morning by e-mail in which I expressed my grave concerns about the direction of the documentary that you contracted to produce based on my book and research for TRIPLE CROSS, my new investigative book from Harper Collins in which I tell the untold story of Ali Mohamed.

In the earlier letter, after setting forth some specific points of criticism of Jonathan’s June 12th, 2006 rewrite of my May 7th, 2006 draft and his limited updated series of revisions on June 16th I offered a proposal for how we could move forward, given the bad faith that I believe TPI and NGC have shown following your treatment of me over the past month since our last productive meeting on the project in Washington May 1st, 2006.

But rather than even entertaining my suggestions for getting the project back on track, the various parties to the call characterized my suggestions variously as “demands,” or “attacks.” Michael Beller exclaimed, “We are not going to let you dictate how this documentary is produced.”

When I told the group that I would have grave reservations about going forward and shooting a series of interviews with TPI as scheduled for later this week in Santa Barbara, Michael Cascio threatened, “Well then we’re just going to have to go forward with this documentary anyway, with you or without you, even if we have to change the name.”

At two other junctures in the conversation he repeated the same threat and actually said that “We have a responsibility to our viewers to see that this project makes air.”

I pointed out to these men what is obvious, this was never a conventional documentary like Inside 9/11 where you and TPI draw from a series of open sources to construct a narrative – this was a documentary based entirely on my enterprise reporting over the past five years.

That’s what you contracted for in seeking the limited rights to TRIPLE CROSS as set forth in my Agreement with TPI. NGC had a contractual responsibility to me via TPI to live up to the terms of the agreement which conferred on TPI limited rights to my work.

NGC and TPI have now endorsed TPI’s breach of that agreement and thus collectively you have lost those rights in TRIPLE CROSS and my research.

As discussed, the breach occurred following Jonathan Tower’s unilateral decision to interview three parties, former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, former FBI SA Jack Cloonan and former JTTF Det. Tommy Corrigan and acquiescing to their demands that I not be given the interview transcripts.

In taking this unilateral course of action TPI breached a material term of my Agreement with them. See provision below:

13 C. "that Peter Lance may use in his book TRIPLE CROSS any and all research material previously generated by him and/or to be generated by him and/or Towers in the course of production without prior permission."

Further, given that NGC green lit the project based on the January 27th, 2006 treatment (which I had written and Jonathan had edited) – a treatment that made my criticism of the FBI clear in no uncertain terms, I believe that NGC’s current version of the script (6.16.06) skews the truth of my research in such a way as to do a disservice to the American public.

Significant revelations uncovered in my original research, circa January 2005 have been left out of the script along with three key discoveries as described in today’s letter which I uncovered in May, 2006.

Worse, the structure of this draft leaves the viewer with the impression that FBI agent Jack Cloonan, who didn’t even begin to look into the Ali Mohamed matter until 1996, was somehow on top of the investigation. As drafted, that impression will leave viewers with distorted picture of the truth.

In short, your handling of my research in this latest draft is more in keeping with Leni Riefenstahl’s style of documentary filmmaking rather than the men that I revere as role models: Fred W. Friendly and Edward R. Murrow.

After thirty-five years as a five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, I cannot associate myself with a project that so corrupts the meaning of my research and skews the truth -- especially on a matter as serious as national security.

Based on the hostile tone of Mssrs. Cascio and Beller I have little faith at this point that NGC will take my suggestions to heart.

Further, given your continued refusal to guarantee a regular tie-in with my book cover and an in-credit announcement directing viewers to amazon.com at a time when you have decided to air the documentary, but my publisher will not have books in stores, it’s clear to me that in commencing this project, NGC engaged in “fraud in the inducement.”

When we made the deal to produce a documentary early in the year, NGC, per Michael Cascio, both in person and by phone, promised to promote my book TRIPLE CROSS in the documentary.

And yet recent statements by Cascio and Beller including those made in this latest conversation today, make it clear that the various divisions of the National Geographic Society have prohibitions against book tie-ins or promotions in the body of programming.

It would have been both legal and ethical for NGC to have pointed those limitations out to me in January before I relied on your promotional promises and devoted months of lost work time to this project in good faith.

Given that fraud and breach of contract, I cannot participate in this project any further.

You are hereby on notice that you no longer have any rights to TRIPLE CROSS or any of my research and you have no right to use my name, image or likeness for commercial purposes.

This documentary as contracted, is based on my enterprise work.

Certain parties that you interviewed, including Chief Fire Marshal Louis F. Garcia, retired F.M. Robert McLoughlin, Cong. Curt Weldon (R-PA), former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, defense lawyer Larry Silverman and others, sat for your cameras predicated on the fact that you were doing a documentary that fairly represented my work.

These people know and trust me and appreciate my representation for fairness and accuracy which is why they agreed to participate.

If you continue to proceed with the documentary, I will contact them and let them know the depth of your deception and contract breach.

Further, I will seek any and all legal remedies in the courts to enjoin you from going forward and seek damages.

Sincerely,

Peter Lance

Cinema 21 Group • 140 Butterfly Lane • Montecito, CA • 93108 • • 805-565-5754 • 565-5795 (f) • 212-203-6123 • www.peterlance.com

John M. Fahey Jr.
President and CEO
The National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036

August 14th, 2006 VIA FAX

cc: Bernard V. Kleinman, Michael Beller. Calvert Morgan, Judith Regan.

John,

Consider this letter a heartfelt effort, by a longstanding member of the Society to alert you to a decision by the National Geographic Channel (NGC) to air a two hour documentary based on my new book TRIPLE CROSS from the ReganBooks division of Harper Collins that does not fairly represent my work. Based on the last draft of the script which I saw in mid June, the documentary represents an inaccurate and highly distorted rendering of my investigative work on the failures of the FBI and Justice Department on the road to 9/11.

As you will see from the attached correspondence and other material, this distortion of my findings began in June, 2006 after a failure to abide by the terms of the contract by Towers Productions Inc. (TPI) the company contacted to produce the documentary. But the decision to rush to air this incomplete work without my full participation was endorsed by executives from NGC.

I have made multiple efforts in writing to ask these officials, including John Ford, Michael Cascio and Michael Beller to hold off airing the documentary until after my book is published in September – at which time all parties can reconvene and make sure that the documentary is accurate.

But in a July 25th e-mail to me, Mr. Beller made it clear that “NGC and Towers have had a strict production schedule to maintain” and they are “unable to delay production until September.”

The National Geographic Society (per its magazine and other publications) has a well deserved reputation for integrity. I am urging you, as I have implored them, to cease and desist in the airing of an incomplete documentary that has been produced without my full participation in order to make an airdate; rather than adhere to the standards and practices principals heretofore exercised by NGC in other productions. As you’ll see from the enclosed treatment dated January 2006, on which NGC went forward and approved a $800,000.00+ budget for the two hour documentary, it was to be based entirely on my enterprise reporting.

As my two letters to John Ford dated June 19th will attest, I went forward with TPI and NGC in good faith and devoted months of work time to the project – the untold story of al Qaeda spy Ali Mohamed. I even wrote a script draft myself dated May 7th, 2006 after multiple meetings in person and by phone with NGC officials who had approved my work.

Per my contract with TPI (embraced by NGC) I was to receive all research materials generated in the course of production. These included the transcripts of all on-camera interviews conducted by TPI.

Yet in late May, 2006 TPI made a unilateral decision to breach the contract and withhold from me key interviews with various former FBI and DOJ officials who insisted that I not have access to the interview transcripts.

This created a situation in which Peter Lance, the principal editorial voice of the documentary and author of the book, was walled off by TPI and NGC from key interviews on the essential issue of the documentary: whether or not the FBI and DOJ were negligent in failing to monitor al Qaeda spy Ali Mohamed. This breach of contract caused me weeks of additional lost work time as I attempted in multiple phone calls and letters to resolve the matter with NGC and TPI.

In my letter to Mr. Beller of June 25th I made it clear that based on the breach, TPI and NGC no longer had the rights to my investigative work and I demanded that they cease and desist production of the documentary until post publication when I would have the time to reconvene with the producers and ensure the accuracy of the NGC production.

Yet both TPI and NGC (per Mr. Beller in his July 25th e-mail) made it clear that they were going forward. This decision necessitated that I hire counsel Bernard V. Kleinman, an attorney long experienced in dealing with matters of terrorism and national security.

On August 3rd, 2006 Mr. Kleinman wrote the enclosed letter to Mr. Beller, urging TPI and NGC officials not to rush to air with an incomplete and flawed documentary. Mr. Beller then withdrew from the dispute and put Mr. Kleinman in touch with an attorney named John Hooper, reportedly connected with News Corp.

In multiple phone conversations with Mr. Hooper and in the enclosed e-mail that I sent on August 9th to Messrs. Towers, Beller, Cascio, Ford, and Albert of NGC, in addition to Jonathan Tower’s attorney Barry Messinger, I offered to screen the latest rough cut of the documentary.

Mr. Hooper responded by insisting that before I could even examine a rough cut that I sign a non-disparagement agreement – an offer that is patently ridiculous on its face as it would require me to “sign off” on the documentary’s accuracy even before I saw it.

I am now making one last ditch effort to appeal to you. The abiding principal of journalism on which I have based my 35 year career, is that you don’t publish or go to air with an investigative story until you have all of the facts correct.

Most recently Cong. Curt Weldon (R-PA) withdrew his participation from the documentary after TPI producers attempted to have him authenticate a document relating to the Able Danger issue that I had uncovered. Congressman Weldon who is co-chair of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees is an enormous supporter of my work and he was frankly shocked that NGC would be willing to go forward with a documentary purportedly based on my work – without my full participation.

Celebrated FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (the subject of two 60 Minutes pieces and a Vanity Fair profile) who was also interviewed for the documentary at my behest, has since called NGC’s actions “despicable.”

I can assure you that if NGC (which reflects the reputation of the Society) goes forward and airs this flawed documentary without my input, in order to mere make an “airdate” the airing will result in great embarrassment not only to NGC but to the Society itself. Further, rather than two assets of News Corp. working together to properly promote a work that benefits both divisions, NGC has declared war on me, a five-time Emmy winning former correspondent for ABC News with an unblemished reputation for accuracy.

I urge you to contact Mr. Kleinman and make sure that I get a rough cut of the program immediately and without condition. I will then screen it, take notes and if the program is salvageable prior to the 28th and NGC makes the changes necessary to properly reflect my reporting, then I will endorse it.

It is August 14th, but I can assure you after 35 years as a working newsman, with almost ten spent at ABC News, a documentary on a crucial topic of public interest like this one can be altered for accuracy right up to the moment of air – and it should be.

But if NGC proceeds down this reckless path and attempts to air a flawed, incomplete and distorted documentary, based in any part on my work, the impact on the reputation of both NGC and the Society could be severe.

Please respond to Mr. Kleinman at the address below ASAP as I will be traveling on Monday August 14th and not reachable in New York until after 8:30 p.m.

Respectfully,

Peter Lance
Bernard V. Kleinman
Attorney At Law
2 Gannett Drive Suite 102
White Plaines, N.Y. 10604
attrnylwyr@yahoo.com
914-644-6660
914-644-6661 (fax)

Bernard V. Kleinman
Attorney-at-Law
Two Gannett Drive Suite 102
White Plains, NY 10604
Tel. 914-644-6660 Fax: 914-644-6661

John Hooper, Esq.
Edwards & Angell
750 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022
August 16th, 2006 via FAX

Re: Peter Lance/Triple Cross

Dear Mr. Hooper,

Since August 3rd, 2006, as you are well aware, there has been communication between myself, as counsel for Peter Lance and Cinema 21 Group, and a number of parties relating to the planned airing of the National Geographic Channel documentary based upon Mr. Lance’s upcoming book, Triple Cross.

We have made repeated requests to screen a rough cut of the documentary which was contracted by Towers Productions, with NGC’s endorsement, to be based entirely on the enterprise reporting of Mr. Lance. You and NGC have refused to allow Mr. Lance to even see a copy of the rough cut – unless he signs a non-disparagement agreement.
This position is entirely unacceptable. How can you expect Mr. Lance to sign off on a project in which he was contracted to be the principal editorial voice when he hasn't even seen the latest cut?

Beginning in late May TPI breached the contract with Mr. Lance which called for him to receive all research materials generated by the project (including on camera interview transcripts) “without permission.”
Nevertheless, in an apparent effort to appease former officials of the Justice Department including retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan, former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White and former Joint Terrorist Task Force investigator Tommy Corrigan, TPI and NGI unilaterally breached the contract and refused to allow Mr. Lance to see those crucial transcripts.

This caused Mr. Lance to delay for weeks the delivery of the manuscript for his book as he sought to independently corroborate allegations made in a draft script presented to him by TPI on June 12th and revised on June 16th in which his work was not only distorted, but skewed heavily in favor of the FBI and Justice Department.

Effectively acknowledging its breach, NGC then delivered the transcripts to Mr. Lance on or about July 12th, 2006 causing him further delays to the point where the scheduled September 5th publication of his book has now been delayed by Harper Collins causing him unknown damages.

Mr. Lance and myself in multiple phone conversations with you and other NGC personnel including Michael Beller, NGC’s chief counsel, have offered to resolve this crisis in one of two ways:

• By NGC not rushing to air the documentary in order to meet a schedule airdate until after Mr. Lance’s book is published, in order to properly fact check and vet the project for which Mr. Lance did all of the principal research; or, in lieu of that:
• Immediately sending Mr. Lance a rough cut copy of the documentary so that he could fact check it and submit notes to NGC in order to guarantee the accuracy of the documentary prior to air.

NGC and TPI have steadfastly refused to comply with either solution and, instead have issued a press release today in which they announce the airdate of the documentary and allege that it is “based in part on the upcoming book Triple Cross by Peter Lance.” (See attached). This release, put out nationally by NGC on the PR News Services does not even quote Mr. Lance and once again offers a distorted picture of his original enterprise reporting.

It is the position of Mr. Lance and Cinema 21 Group that they have fully complied with all terms of the contract and did everything possible to participate in the fact checking and editorial production and post production process, but that they were intentionally excluded and “walled off” from that process by NGC and TPI.

Furthermore, that TPI wantonly breached its contract with Mr. Lance and Cinema 21 Group in an apparent effort to skew a documentary critical of the government, in favor of the government on a crucial issue of national security and that, based on Mr. Lance’s examination of the last script draft of 16 July 2006, the documentary represents a sham and wholly misleading representation of his work.

My clients anticipate and expect that TPI and NGC will fully abide by all of terms of the contract as amended. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Peter Lance to receive Executive Producer credit, see Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) ¶ 4;
2. TPI/NGC will, in either the opening credits or closing credits, broadcast a full screen card to read: “Based on Triple Cross by Peter Lance.” See MOA ¶ 14.B.
3. TPI will use its “best efforts” to co-ordinate the airing of the documentary with the ReganBooks division of Harper Collins, publisher of Triple Cross. See MOA Appendix “A”, AIR DATE. (In this last case, the final book cover for Triple Cross should be featured prominently throughout the documentary and— as per the proposal of NGC which initially refused to delay the air date to comply with the publication date, a ten second “ad” should be included prominently at the end of the documentary which directs viewers to amazon.com’s page for pre-ordering of the book.

None of these demands, if complied with will serve to cure TPI’s contract breach, nor do they constitute on my client’s part any admission that NGI or TPI are in compliance with the contract.

In addition thereto, my clients waive none of their rights to any equitable or money damages under the contract. However, if these minimum demands are met prior to air, they will at least serve to mitigate my client’s growing damages.

My clients reiterate their demand to see an immediate rough cut of the documentary which you informed me you were sending out nationally to members of the press for review.

The irony of Peter Lance, the principal editorial voice of Triple Cross the book and documentary, being prevented from seeing a documentary which you purport to base even in “part” on his work, is outrageous and only further demonstrates NGC and TPI’s bad faith in its contract breach.

Mr. Lance is in New York today traveling back to his home office in Santa Barbara. We expect that a rough cut of Triple Cross, your documentary which you now allege is based “in part” on his work, will be sent to him by priority overnight courier at his address there.

Cordially yours,
Bernard V. Kleinman

This e-mail message is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521 and is legally privileged. Unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender at (914) 644-6660, or by reply e-mail, and destroy all copies of the original message. Thank you.

“TRIPLE CROSS”
A National Geographic Channel Special about Al Qaeda’s Master Spy and
the Untold Story Behind the 9/11 Attacks
ONE-PAGE SYNOPSIS

Based on “TRIPLE CROSS”, an extraordinary new book by renowned investigative journalist Peter Lance, Towers Productions presents the untold story of Ali A. Mohamed, a radical ex-Egyptian Army officer who became a CIA asset, joined the US Army, and spent five years as an FBI informant, but who all the while was really Osama bin Laden’s chief intelligence agent, playing a key role in Al Qaeda terror plots and “triple crossing” US officials on the road to 9/11.

It’s a real life epic that plays out like a Tom Clancy thriller as it takes us through twist and turns from Brooklyn to Khartoum, Kandahar to Fort Bragg. The story spans a quarter century from the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, up through the 9/11 attacks, and to the present. As the plot unfolds, we are introduced to characters we never knew were connected to the 9/11 saga, including corrupt FBI agents and Mafia kingpins.

And it’s a tale that some well-known federal authorities are extremely reluctant to discuss, because it shines a highly unflattering light on US intelligence failures going back to the late 1980s.

The two-hour documentary will show how Mohamed survived more than 14 years as al Qaeda’s chief “mole” inside the U.S. How he moved his boss, bin Laden, in and out of Afghanistan. How he helped plan the operation in Somalia that downed two U.S. Blackhawk helicopters. How he assisted in planning the 1998 African embassy bombings, and even wrote part of the al Qaeda terror manual. And finally, how Mohamed confessed to his crimes, cut a deal with the US government that has never been explained to the public…and soon after, just plain disappeared. To this day Mohamed’s whereabouts are a complete mystery.

The 9/11 Commission’s Final Report, released in the summer of 2004, exposed only a fragment of the Mohamed story. Since then, the Able Danger scandal has begun to expose the extent to which US officials set up barriers to uncovering the 9/11 plot. This film will link the Mohamed story to that brewing scandal.

ACT ONE

Prologue: October 20, 2000. Ali Mohamed stands shackled before Judge Leonard B. Sand in a Federal District courtroom in Lower Manhattan. Over the next 30 minutes, he pleads guilty five times, admitting involvement in plots to kill U.S. soldiers in Somalia and Africa, and U.S. civilians “anywhere in the world.” He was handpicked by Osama bin Laden to train al Qaeda terrorists in Sudan and Afghanistan. The goals of his students were to “kidnap, murder and main.”

In short but deliberate sentences, Mohamed peels back the top layer of the secret life he’d led as a master spy. He was highly educated, fluent in four languages. He’d risen from a young recruit in the virulently anti-American Egyptian Islamic Jihad to become Osama bin Laden’s most trusted security advisor. As Ali ticks off al Qaeda exploits, he appears contrite, a broken jihadi, a man now willing to cooperate with the Feds. The hope is that he will finally give up all of his secrets.

Yet in that Southern District Courtroom nearly two years before the attacks of September 11th, he said nothing on the record about his most stunning achievements… As Peter Lance begins to tell the story we flashback to:

1984. A veteran of the same radical Egyptian Army unit that killed Sadat, Mohamed is discharged from the military.

1985. Mohamed signs on as a CIA asset and is allowed to slip past a watch list and enter the U.S. Within months, Mohamed has married a Silicon Valley woman whom he met on the plane over, and joined the U.S. Army as an enlisted man. He quickly makes sergeant and gets himself posted to the highly secure base at Fort Bragg, NC where Delta Force and the Green Berets train. As Peter Lance tells it, Mohamed was dispatched to the US by bin Laden and Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian radical who serves as bin Laden’s number-two, and whose special protégé was a young Army officer named Ali Mohamed.

July 1989. The FBI’s elite Special Operations Group follows a clandestine cell of Islamic militants from the al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn to a firing range in Calverton, Long Island. Of the men photographed by the FBI over four weekends, one would kill Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990; three would be convicted in the 1993 WTC bombing; and two would be convicted in 1995 in the plot to blow up New York’s bridge and tunnels. The man training the militants at the firing range is none other than Ali Mohamed. Yet within weeks, the FBI shuts down the investigation into what would soon become al Qaeda’s flagship sleeper cell.

November 5th, 1990. The Feds are searching the home of one of Mohamed’s Calverton trainees, El Sayyid Nosair. Nosair had been apprehended for assassinating Rabbi Meier Kahane.
In Nosair’s house, the FBI and NYPD find top-secret memos from the U.S. Joint Chiefs, manuals and maps from Fort Bragg, pictures of the World Trade Center, and bomb recipes. They also find tapes of the Arabic sermons of the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman (OAR) the radical Egyptian cleric who leads the New York cell, and who, like Mohamed, entered the US by slipping past a “watch list.” The evidence gives authorities a road map to the World Trade Center bombing plot to come. Yet for unexplained reasons, the FBI goes along with the NYPD and calls the Kahane assassination a “lone gunman” shooting. How Nosair would have obtained US military documents—from the same army base where Ali Mohammed had served—is left unanswered for now…

1991. Osama bin Laden commissions Mohamed to coordinate his fledgling al Qaeda organization’s move from Afghanistan to Sudan. Mohammed oversees the building of terror training camps in Sudan, drills bin Laden’s personal bodyguards and helps write the manual that later becomes al Qaeda’s terror bible. Mohammed’s travels outside the U.S. would range from a few weeks, to at one point, more than a year, between older terrorist camps in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s new base in Sudan, and the U.S. He performs bin Laden’s bidding while commuting back and forth to his American wife in Silicon Valley where he seeks a “secret” clearance from a top U.S. defense contractor.

ACT TWO

1992. The FBI has other opportunities to hook on to Ali Mohammed and penetrate the cell he’d trained in New York. Unfortunately, agents either avoid or overlook many of their chances.

FBI Special Agent Nancy Floyd in the New York office recruits Emad Salem, an Egyptian ex-intelligence officer to infiltrate the cell. Salem is close to uncovering a plot, inspired by the Blind Sheikh and being planned by his militant followers. to hit “12 Jewish locations” in NY. But FBI ASAC Carson Dunbar, a senior agent with zero terrorism experience, takes over the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) and shuts Salem down. Now the FBI is blinded to the true danger of the Sheik’s operation. As soon as the Bureau loses its asset inside the cell the Sheikh contacts Pakistan and Ramzi Yousef, a master bomb maker, arrives in New York

Fall of 1992. Mohamed’s trainees from the al Farooq mosque begin serving as Yousef’s team in executing the first World Trade Center bombing. During this period the Feds have multiple chances to interdict the cell and stop the bombing.

February 26, 1993. Yousef and the Calverton trainees were able to complete construction of a bomb and detonate it in the basement of the World Trade Center. After the bombing, Agent Floyd and her Egyptian informant go back undercover, and manage an FBI sting that convicts the Blind Sheik and nine others in a plot to blow up New York’s landmarks.

Out in Silicon Valley, meantime, Ali Mohamed, bin Laden’s “man inside,” cozies up to US intelligence. By now he has left the US Army and signed on as an FBI informant. He studies the FBI’s playbook on Al Qaeda while feeding his control agents disinformation by informing on Mexican drug smugglers. The assignment enables him to deflect attention from his own trafficking: smuggling al Qaeda operatives into America, even boldly squiring one, al Qaeda’s No. 2, Dr. al-Zawahiri, on two U.S. fund raising tours that raise ten of thousands of dollars.

In another 1993 incident, Royal Canadian Mounted Police catch Mohamed attempting to smuggle al Qaeda terrorist Essam Marzouk into the US, using Ali’s favorite route from Vancouver to Seattle. It is Marzouk who would later seek a nuclear weapon for bin Laden in years to come. But after being interrogated by the Mounties, Ali is released on the word of the FBI.

ACT THREE

Ali Mohamed’s al Qaeda assignments in Africa multiply by 1993, when the ex-Egyptian officer and FBI informant organizes a Kenyan al Qaeda cell for bin Laden. The Kenyan cell will contribute to the downing of two US military helicopters in the infamous Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia.

Mohammed soon contacts Wadih el Hage, one of the future conspirators in the African US embassy bombings, and someone who had likewise known the New York cell’s Calverton trainees. New evidence uncovered by Lance for TRIPLE CROSS will show that officials in the US Justice Department, including Patrick Fitzgerald, were aware that Mohamed was in contact with El Hage.

Shortly after the ’93 Trade Center bombing, the FBI actually recruits Mohamed to provide key intelligence on the cell responsible for that attack, even though their informant was the very man who had trained the cell members. While feeding his control agents disinformation, Ali continues to study the Bureau’s playbook.

It’s at this point that Mohamed brokers an historic summit between bin Laden, a radical Sunni, and Imad Fayez Mugniyah, leader of the military wing of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group responsible for bombing the Beirut U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in 1983. This summit happens while Ali is working directly as an informant to FBI agents in Sacramento, San Francisco and New York. Yet the Feds apparently never know about it.

1994. While the FBI’s trail towards ’93 Trade Center mastermind Ramzi Yousef runs cold, Yousef and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed move to Manila, linking up with Abdul Hakim Murad, a pilot trained in 4 U.S. flight schools; and Wali Khan, an Uzbeki whom bin Laden called “The Lion”. The team will move on to brainstorm three terror attacks in Asia, with a special interest in detonating planes.
They conduct a wet-test of a miniature nitroglycerine bomb aboard PAL Flight #434 on December 11th, 1994. The explosion kills a Japanese national but just misses the center wing fuel tank. Yousef vows to get it right when he executes project Bojinka, a plot to bomb 12 US-bound jetliners over the Pacific.

December 16th, 1994. INS agents arrest bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, on visa fraud and other violations in Mountain View, California, just miles from Ali Mohamed’s house.

The Feds seize an Apple Newton PDA with a treasure trove of data linking Khalifa to bin Laden, the New York cell and the Yousef-KSM cell in Manila. Khalifa is one of the Manila cell’s financiers. His computer is an important piece of evidence that connects to both the ’93 attack on the World Trade Center, as well as the now-brewing 9/11 plot. Khalifa is a walking one-man playbook of al Qaeda secrets who should have been highly motivated to cut a deal with US officials. Why? Because a death sentence hangs over his head for a series of al Qaeda bombings in Amman, Jordan.

January 6, 1995. But higher ups at the Justice and State Departments want no part of holding an alleged bomber from Jordan on American soil. In this case, ironically, despite the FBI’s lobbying for the INS and Justice Department to hold Khalifa, officials decide otherwise. Jamie Gorelick, a Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Justice Department, along with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, petitions an Immigration judge for Khalifa’s release. He is eventually extradited to Jordan and, after a witness recanted, he was set free – only to return to Saudi Arabia where he is embraced with a hero’s welcome. He would serve as Ramzi Yousef’s chief financier in his Bojinka plot.

That same day in 1995, Philippines National Police catch a break when a suspicious apartment fire lands Yousef’s terror partner Abdul Hakim Murad in custody. Authorities confiscate the Toshiba laptop Yousef has used to store all of his terror plots. This laptop, and the ensuing interrogations of Murad, do far more than hint at what will be the 9/11 attacks…. But they will be overlooked or otherwise ignored.

ACT FOUR

Exclusive evidence retrieved by the Philippine National Police from Yousef’s laptop proves that one of the plots being developed by the Yousef-KSM cell was the “planes as missiles” suicide scenario realized on 9/11 – a plot separate from the Bojinka plot to bomb 12 planes in the Pacific, for which Murad would be the lead pilot. Lance will detail how Yousef and KSM had chosen up to seven targets on both U.S. coasts including the WTC, Pentagon, White House, CIA headquarters, a nuclear plant, and the Sears & Transamerica Towers. Further, that they had up to ten Islamic pilots training in U.S. flight schools in 1995.

In an exclusive interview conducted by Peter Lance with PNP Col. Rodolfo Mendoza – the chief interrogator of Murad – will be included. Mendoza uncovered the entire “planes as missiles” plot.
With recently uncovered documents, we’ll prove that the FBI’s Legal Attaché in Manila got the evidence as early as January 1995.

The FBI agents who took control of Murad wrote a haunting 17-page report on their debriefing, which included a statement from Murad that Yousef intended to return to the US and attack the World Trade Center again. (This body of evidence contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s report that the planes operation was conceived in 1996.)

We’ll cut to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), the federal jail in Lower Manhattan where Ramzi Yousef, apprehended in February 1995, is awaiting trial for the Bojinka plot and representing himself in court. Through a series of notes and FBI’s #302 memos Lance uncovered, we’ll document how the bomb maker sends messages to his partner Murad across the cell of Greg Scarpa, Jr., a Colombo family wiseguy, while Scarpa awaits his racketeering trial.

The startling notes, which the FBI gets directly from Scarpa, Jr., show how Yousef’s "people" intend to put a bomb on a U.S. airliner to win a mistrial in the Bojinka case. His motive is to argue that a blast on a 747 identical to the PAL #434 “wet test” occurred while he was incarcerated; creating reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds over whether Yousef was responsible for the PAL bombing. Based on evidence obtained exclusively by Lance from the PNP we’ll show how Yousef’s diagrams for such a device matched precisely those of his earlier PAL #434 bomb. In the notes passed to Scarpa Jr., Yousef even suggests RDX as an alternate explosive to nitroglycerine , the key explosive in the PAL #434 device.

Scarpa Jr.’s cooperation with the FBI goes much further. The Bureau instructs Scarpa Jr. to tell Yousef he can help the terrorist communicate with his people in New York and abroad. Yousef thus begins to place calls from the prison to his associates on the outside, making at least one to his uncle, Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Doha, Qatar. The call is patched through a Mafia front company called “Roma Corp” run by the FBI. According to one Bureau document obtained by Lance, Scarpa Jr. reports that Yousef has told him that Osama bin Laden plans to hijack a plane to free the Blind Sheik. This is a crucial piece of intelligence that takes on new importance in the years to come as both Presidents Clinton (in ‘98) and Bush (in ‘01) are warned of similar bin Laden hijack plots.

Ali Mohammed, meanwhile, continues his missions on behalf of Osama bin Laden. He snaps photographs of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, then slips into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and deliver his intelligence. Mohammed later coordinates bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan when the Sudanese government effectively kicks him out soon thereafter. Another of bin Laden’s Sudanese aides, Jamal al Fadl, defects to the U.S., giving Feds their first real sense, at least officially, of al Qaeda’s scope and bin Laden’s violent designs on the U.S. This informant had at one point worked at the very same al Farooq Mosque from which Ali Mohammed had trained the WTC bombers. He directly ties bin Laden to the New York cell of the Blind Sheik, citing bin Laden’s funding of El Sayyid Nosair’s defense in 1991 after the Kahane murder.

July 17th, 1996. The night before Murad's confession to Col. Mendoza is to be entered into evidence in Yousef’s Bojinka trial, TWA #800 crashes off Long Island after a mysterious explosion in the area of the center fuel tank. 234 passengers and crew are killed. The FBI immediately dispatches 1000 agents to the crash site, believing (based on Scarpa Jr.’s intel) that the crash was a terrorist incident.

As he told Scarpa Jr. he would do, Yousef immediately requests that the judge in his case declare a mistrial. The motion is denied. But the evidence uncovered by Lance suggests that the crash of TWA #800 was the Bojinka plot fulfilled.

ACT FIVE

Fall 1996. As the wreckage of TWA 800 is assembled piece by piece in a hangar on Long Island, FBI agents discover traces of nitroglycerine, RDX and a third high explosive (PETN) near the center wing fuel tank. The Bureau is about to declare the crash sabotage with evidence of a “bomb,” when it does a “180 turn.”

With zero forensic evidence to support the theory, the Bureau ends up siding with the National Transportation Safety Board, which concludes that a spark in TWA #800’s fuel tank caused its spontaneous combustion. It doesn’t matter that in the billions of air miles of the 747-100 there had never been such an event or that the evidence of a bomb trigger precisely matches what Yousef told Scarpa, Jr. he would do and moves for a mistrial the day after the crash.

The FBI would eventually shut down the TWA #800 investigation in the fall of 1997, declaring that the NTSB’s “spark” theory was the probable cause. But Lance will reveal shocking evidence that Bureau agents not only found the high explosives nitro glycerin, RDX and PETN between the 15th and 17th rows of TWA #800’s passenger cabin directly above the fuel tank, he’ll also shatter the FBI’s sole explanation for the presence of the explosives in the planes wreckage.

The act will end with the FBI’s dramatic flight to Qatar to capture KSM after the Roma Corp. patch revealed his presence in Doha, only to narrowly miss him when Qatari officials tip KSM off. According to Lance, FBI officials have never acknowledged the significance of the Scarpa-Yousef connection, as it might suggest that the FBI might be blamed with facilitating the TWA 800 crash.

Lance will further document that the FBI was especially reluctant to have Greg Scarpa Jr. emerge as a credible witness in a possible TWA 800 trial, because doing so would undermine up to 60 Mafia cases stemming from New York’s infamous “Colombo war” which claimed 12 lives from 1991-92. One such case, involving Scarpa’s father and an allegedly corrupt FBI undercover agent, was recently re-opened by the Brooklyn DA’s office, based on Lance’s research.

Among the top officials who are party to the Scarpa-Yousef intelligence: Dietrich “Dieter” Snell, the Assistant US Attorney who co-prosecuted Yousef and Murad; Valerie Caproni, head of the criminal division in the Eastern District of New York, on whose career this series of Colombo War mafia cases rested; and: Patrick Fitzgerald, then head of Organized Crime & Terrorism in the Southern District of New York, who would go on to convict Osama bin Laden in absentia in the 2001 African Embassy bombing case, before becoming US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and a highly prominent Special Prosecutor.

Meantime, FBI officials continue to trust bin Laden’s personal intelligence agent inside the US, Ali Mohamed. Mohamed, now known in Al Qaeda as “Ali the American,” moves freely back and forth between Silicon Valley to consult with bin Laden in Sudan and Afghanistan. But while snookering FBI agents on both coasts, Mohamed’s most devastating act of terror was to come.

ACT SIX

Peter Lance will lead off the second hour with the sealed federal indictment of Khalid Sheik Mohamed (KSM) in 1996 for the Pacific airliners/Bojinka plot Keeping the hunt for KSM secret stands in stark contrast to the very public $2-million reward that brought Yousef to justice after the first World Trade Center Bombing. In fact, Department of Justice officials will hide KSM’s identity from the public until January of 1998, when he was well into executing the 9/11 plot.

Greg Scarpa, Jr., meantime, should have received “downward release time” under federal sentencing rules for risking his life to inform on Yousef. During the 11 months he informed on Yousef, Scarpa Jr. generated a treasure trove of intelligence on Yousef, al Qaeda and bin Laden’s threats to the U.S. But, when he goes to trial in 1998 for racketeering, prosecutors Patrick Fitzgerald and Dieter Snell support Valerie Caproni’s allegation that Scarpa, Jr.’s intelligence was a “hoax” and a “scam.” As a result, Scarpa Jr., a wiseguy who had run a marijuana ring, is sentenced to 40 years in a Supermax prison for RICO violations.

Throughout this period, from 1996 on, the US Justice Department and the FBI’s New York office--the two bin Laden “offices of origin”--receive multiple warnings that a larger al Qaeda network is out there, ready to strike. These include the November 1997 Luxor massacre, tied to the Blind Sheikh’s Islamic Group, as well as a 1998 Presidential Daily Briefing to President Clinton that warns of an airplane hijack plot to free the Blind Sheikh. But their ultimate wakeup calls will be the 1998 African Embassy Bombings, a plot planned by both Wadih El Hage and the FBI’s owned informant Ali Mohammed.

ACT SEVEN

August 7th, 1998. Blasts at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania kill more than 200 people, including 12 Americans. As Peter Lance will reveal, Patrick Fitzgerald and the Department of Justice soon come to understand the depth of Ali Mohammed’s deception and how he could become the linchpin witness in the Embassy bombing trial, which Fitzgerald would prosecute.

Days after the Kenya and Tanzanian bombings, the Feds called Mohammed back to New York for a briefing.
Demonstrating the audacity that had allowed him to penetrate the Bureau for years, Mohamed returns, figuring he could brass it out, like he had in 1995 when the Feds named him as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the “Day of Terror” plot.

But as soon as he leaves the grand jury room, Mohammed is arrested. The Feds quickly jail him in the M.C.C. under a “John Doe” warrant. One might imagine that the capture of bin Laden’s “master spy” would generate front-page headlines. It does not. The feds keep it quiet, just as they did with the sealed indictment of KSM in 1996. According to Lance, this is because federal prosecutors worry that Mohammed would reveal the long and compromising history of his involvement with the US government if he ever took the stand in open court.

For the next nine months the Feds keep Mohammed’s presence in the federal jail hidden from the press as Ali negotiates a plea deal. Given that his presence in the Embassy bombing plot alone could generate a death sentence, Mohammed is characteristically cocky about his chances. He knew that the Feds will want to keep secret the damage he’s done to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement over the years. In the Spring of 1999 they charge him, but he appears un phased.

Meanwhile, the Defense Intelligence Agency begins developing its own intelligence, linking members of the New York cell to an unknown al Qaeda operation. Commencing in December of 1999, on the order of Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton, the Army’s Special Operations Command create Operation Able Danger designed to identify al Qaeda cells and take them out.

Using a unique concept called “data mining” involving high-end search “bots” which comb the Internet, the Able Danger analysts soon unearth the same evidence that the FBI had for years; namely, that al Qaeda was responsible for the first attack on the World Trade Center and is planning more acts of terror aimed at the U.S. A link chart created in the late summer of 1999 by DIA analysts, obtained for the first time by Peter Lance, clearly demonstrates the links among bin Laden, the Blind Sheik, Ramzi Yousef, and Ali Mohamed.

ACT EIGHT

January 2000. The U.S. intelligence community has its next best change at interdicting the 9/11 plot when the CIA becomes aware of a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that involves Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the “planes operation” hijackers. Also present is Khalid bin Atash, who will be a key operational player in the U.S.S. Cole bombing ten months later as well as Hambali, the Indonesian cleric linked to the Yousef-KSM Manila bombing cell.

But in another of the catastrophic “what ifs” on the road to 9/11, the CIA reportedly fails to tip the Bureau to the meeting until the two hijackers were already in the U.S.

October 20th, 2000. We now come full-circle to where we began in the prologue of the film, with Ali Mohamed’s appearance before Judge Sands in a Federal District courtroom in Lower Manhattan. For reasons that have never been explained, Mohamed, with a possible death penalty staring him in the face, is able to parlay his plea into a secret deal. Did it involve prison time? We don’t know, as there is no record of Mohamed in the US prison system.

Perhaps they sent him into the cushy limbo of witness protection, so he could proffer more tidbits about the terror network he’d served as al Qaeda’s “California connection.” Today, more than five and a half years after pleading guilty to crimes that would have ended any other terrorist’s life via lethal injection, Ali Mohamed, remains a legal black hole. As far as anyone outside the Government knows, he has never been sentenced for his crimes.

Exactly how much did Mohamed know about the 9/11 plot, which was well underway at the time of his capture? We may never know. But, as Lance explains, the inability of senior DOJ officials like Dietrich Snell and Patrick Fitzgerald to extract from Mohammed the full depth of al Qaeda’s violent plan to attack the U.S., results by 2001 in a continuing series of intelligence failures.

For any FBI or DOJ investigator in the SDNY, by now, the number of “dots” on the chart foreshadowing a major bin Laden attack on the U.S. by now is overwhelming. Given the body of intelligence they had on the Blind Sheikh, Yousef, KSM, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Ali Mohammed and bin Laden, who had already declared war on America, why weren’t these senior Justice Department officials able to interdict the 9/11 plot – especially when, by the fall of 2000, hijackers al Midhar and al Hazmi were living openly in San Diego in rooms rented from Abdusattar Shaikh, another paid FBI informant?

September 2000. The next opportunity for the Feds to bring the planets into alignment comes within days of the FBI’s cancellation of a meeting between Bureau agents and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer who was slated to share the active Able Danger links between the Blind Sheikh’s New York cell and al Qaeda.

Weeks later, Osama bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri stage an infamous video fatwa. In it, bin Laden presents one of the Blind Sheik’s sons, who declares: “Go to the spilling of blood for your Sheikh,” and “remember (El Sayyid) Nosair” – the man Ali Mohammed trained at Calverton who spilled the first al Qaeda blood on U.S. soil with the murder of Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990.

If the FBI and Southern District prosecutors like Fitzgerald and Snell ever needed confirmation of the link between bin Laden, the Blind Sheik, and the New York cell that had carried out the first World Trade Center bombing, this was it.

Two weeks later, October 12, 2000. A small inflatable boat laden with explosives blows a four-story hole in the side of the U.S.S. Cole, in Aden, Yemen harbor. 17 U.S sailors are killed. In his earlier video fatwa, bin Laden, whose roots are in Yemen, even hinted at the attack’s location by wearing a Yemeni dagger.

By then, Lt. Col. Shaffer and the Able Danger operatives say they had already put lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta’s picture in a link chart tied to the blind Sheikh. But before the end of the year 2000, less than nine months before 9/11, DIA officials had already ordered that evidence destroyed. The question is Why?

ACT NINE

2001. As the clock ticks down now towards the events of September 11th, 33 separate terror warnings will be made by the summer of 2001. To use CIA Director George Tenet’s metaphor “the system was blinking red.” In July Phoenix Memo is issued, warning of suspicious Islamic pilots in U.S. flight schools. In August, Zacarias Moussaoui is arrested, but his computer is not searched because the FBI is unable to obtain a warrant from the special foreign intelligence court set up to handle such cases.
There is another reminder of the importance of the Blind Sheik to al Qaeda when on August 6th, President George W. Bush receives a Presidential Daily Briefing in Crawford Texas, titled “Bin Laden determined to attack in U.S.” It too warns of an airplane hijack plot to free the Blind Sheikh harking back to Greg Scarpa’s Yousef intel from 1996 and the PDB to Clinton in ’98. And then, as Lance reveals, a week before 9/11, the Taliban government in Afghanistan offers to exchange the Blind Sheik for the Christian missionaries held captive in Kabul.

The events of the day 9/11 itself are self-evident. The question is, why? Why did it have to happen given the dozens of warnings dating back to the FBI’s surveillance of Ali Mohammed in the summer of 1989, as he was training the first cell to attack the Twin Towers? What did Federal prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald feel knowing that Mohammed had been in custody since 1998 and had to know details of the “planes as missiles” plot given his closeness to bin Laden?

As Lance asserts now, in the beginning the FBI lapses amounted to negligence. By the time the Philippines National Police tipped the Feds to the “planes as missiles” plot in 1995, their lapses had reached the stage of “gross negligence.” But taking into account Jamie Gorelick’s forced extradition of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa and the long overdue arrest of Ali Mohammed, followed by the destruction of the Able Danger data, the evidence begins to suggest that senior FBI, DOJ and DIA officials were setting up roadblocks to uncovering the truth.

The motive, Lance believes, is the abject fear among prosecutors like Fitzgerald, Snell and Deputy A.G. Gorelick that the five year long compromise of the FBI by Ali Mohammed would make them each, in part, accountable for failing to stop the 9/11 attacks. With Ali Mohammed, the Feds had their best possible source inside al Qaeda, and yet, for years, bin Laden’s master spy continued to use them, giving them virtually nothing in return.

Why didn’t the 9/11 Commission pick up on this? As Lance notes, it might have been because Gorelick herself became one of the ten Commissioners and Dietrich Snell was appointed senior counsel. As we’ll soon see, the conflicts of interest were profound and the Commission would reveal only part of the truth.

ACT TEN

In this final act, we will tell the story of the 9/11 Commission, and how it failed to issue a truly thoroughgoing Final Report because it suffered from conflicts of interest. Lance will link some of the chief people responsible for contributing to the 9/11 Commission’s understanding of events to a campaign of disinformation. Among those individuals:

Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who served on the Commission’s panel. In 1995, she wrote the famous “wall memo”, which instituted a “wall” to separate all FBI and DOJ investigators working on “past” al Qaeda cases from Foreign Counter Intelligence (FCI) investigators who were trying to prevent “future” al Qaeda attacks. This, says Lance, was the equivalent of separating the left side of the Justice Department’s al Qaeda brain from the right side.
Later, when the 9/11 Commission would cite “walls” and “stove piping” as the chief reasons for the intelligence community’s failure to stop the 9/11 attacks, they failed to